V.E. Schwab on “Victorious,” the Villains Trilogy, and an Ending 13 Years in the Making

For readers who may be new to the villain series, what's kind of your soft launch into the series?

Like my pitch? Yeah.

Okay.

So Vicious is about two pre-med students, Victor and Eli, who discover that the key to superpowers are near-death experiences and then set out trying to manufacture their own abilities by controlling their own deaths and resurrections.

And everything goes terrible.

Yes.

And it's for folks that might be new to it.

You were really interested in telling a story from what makes a villain a villain.

And is it power? Well, I think my argument is that as much as I love comic books and comic book aesthetics and style and pacing, I have a logistical argument with the concept that superpowers make us a superhero.

I just don't think looking around at our world that there is any proof like Zoran Mamdani aside, maybe on the whole that.

It's very hard to find proof that when you hand power to somebody, it makes them a better person.

And so I thought instead it would be really, really fun to see if I could write a story where I had two terrible people doing really terrible things and still make the reader root for one of them.

And that was kind of the...

And I also kind of wanted to treat these two young men in the kind of relationship that like teenage girls have with each other, which is this obsession where it's like, are you my best friend? Are you my mortal enemy? Do I love you? Am I in love with you? Do I just want to be with you? Do I want to wear your skin? Like, do I just want to have like they're soulmates? They're soulmates in the way that like teenage girls really become soulmates with each other.

Yeah.

So each book is modeled off of a movie or TV series.

And yesterday I learned that Vengeful is modeled off of Killing Eve.

There's a Killing Eve homage.

There's an homage to each one.

So it's like Cowboy Bebop for number one, Killing Eve for number two, because Vengeful is really, in addition to everything happening with Victor and Eli, like that's a story about angry women.

That is like the precursor to Bury Our Bones.

That is Marcella Riggins is a character written in 2016.

And she literally at one point in the story incinerates a man for not letting her finish her sentence.

And like, I don't blame her.

And I think I think I would have made her an alibi in that situation.

For readers who may be new to the villain series, what's kind of your soft launch into the series?

Like my pitch? Yeah.

Okay.

So Vicious is about two pre-med students, Victor and Eli, who discover that the key to superpowers are near-death experiences and then set out trying to manufacture their own abilities by controlling their own deaths and resurrections.

And everything goes terrible.

Yes.

And it's for folks that might be new to it.

You were really interested in telling a story from what makes a villain a villain.

And is it power? Well, I think my argument is that as much as I love comic books and comic book aesthetics and style and pacing, I have a logistical argument with the concept that superpowers make us a superhero.

I just don't think looking around at our world that there is any proof like Zoran Mamdani aside, maybe on the whole that.

It's very hard to find proof that when you hand power to somebody, it makes them a better person.

And so I thought instead it would be really, really fun to see if I could write a story where I had two terrible people doing really terrible things and still make the reader root for one of them.

And that was kind of the...

And I also kind of wanted to treat these two young men in the kind of relationship that like teenage girls have with each other, which is this obsession where it's like, are you my best friend? Are you my mortal enemy? Do I love you? Am I in love with you? Do I just want to be with you? Do I want to wear your skin? Like, do I just want to have like they're soulmates? They're soulmates in the way that like teenage girls really become soulmates with each other.

Yeah.

So each book is modeled off of a movie or TV series.

And yesterday I learned that Vengeful is modeled off of Killing Eve.

There's a Killing Eve homage.

There's an homage to each one.

So it's like Cowboy Bebop for number one, Killing Eve for number two, because Vengeful is really, in addition to everything happening with Victor and Eli, like that's a story about angry women.

That is like the precursor to Bury Our Bones.

That is Marcella Riggins is a character written in 2016.

And she literally at one point in the story incinerates a man for not letting her finish her sentence.

And like, I don't blame her.

And I think I think I would have made her an alibi in that situation.